Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for supporting minimization of drive tests (MDT) for radio access network (RAN) sharing in a wireless communication system.
Related Art
Universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) is a 3rd generation (3G) asynchronous mobile communication system operating in wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) based on European systems, global system for mobile communications (GSM) and general packet radio services (GPRS). The long-term evolution (LTE) of UMTS is under discussion by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) that standardized UMTS.
The 3GPP LTE is a technology for enabling high-speed packet communications. Many schemes have been proposed for the LTE objective including those that aim to reduce user and provider costs, improve service quality, and expand and improve coverage and system capacity. The 3GPP LTE requires reduced cost per bit, increased service availability, flexible use of a frequency band, a simple structure, an open interface, and adequate power consumption of a terminal as an upper-level requirement.
Radio access network (RAN) sharing is a way for operators to share the heavy deployment costs for mobile networks, especially in the roll-out phase. In the current mobile telephony marketplace, functionality that enables various forms of RAN sharing is becoming more and more important. Multiple operators can share radio network resources and create potential requirements that complement existing system capabilities for sharing common E-UTRAN resources.
Minimization of drive tests (MDT) is a feature introduced in 3GPP LTE rel-10 to allow the harvesting of network coverage and quality information from customer user equipments (UEs) as they move within the coverage of the RAN. This provides better quality data, at a lower cost, than that produced by the RAN operator performing drive testing of the RAN using test UEs.
In area based MDT, MDT data is collected from UEs in a specified area. The area is defined as a list of cells or as a list of tracking/routing/location areas. The area based MDT is an enhancement of the management based trace functionality. Area based MDT may be either a logged MDT or immediate MDT. In signaling based MDT, MDT data is collected from one specific UE. The signaling based MDT is an enhancement of the signaling based subscriber and equipment trace. A signaling based MDT can be either a logged MDT or Immediate MDT.
A method for enhancing MDT in RAN sharing environment may be required.